24 hours, 22x24 push ups, and one jumpsuit!   27 Oct 2016

Our slightly crazy and much admired Health and Safety Manager is spending 24 hours in a small room to raise money for the Cancer Society.

Andy Westgate organised last year’s Otago Polytechnic teams for Relay for Life … and he’s organising this year’s teams as well (for the weekend of Nov 19/20th). But he reckons he can go one step further, or rather one box further!

He’s spending 24 hours in a small shed-like building on campus (9am Thursday to 9am Friday). He’s not going to have any devices (his wife doesn’t think he’ll cope that long without Candy Crush!), but he will have a small radio for music … although he said he’ll even get rid of that if people complain.

While in there, he’s going to be hand-sewing his outfit for the Relay for Life … in his words “A nice little one-piece made of very interesting material … I’ve seen nicer curtains to be honest”. NB he’s not a sewer by any stretch of the imagination. He thinks it’ll take him 12 hours to sew, I think he’s being optimistic!

The other thing he’ll be doing while in there is 22 push ups every hour for the 24 hours. Andy used to be in the Royal Air force. The point of the push ups is to recognise PTSD (much like the FB craze that’s going round at the moment, where people do 22 push ups for 22 days to honour the 22 military staff who’ve taken their lives due to PTSD).

Andy was a mover in the air force for 13 years – ie he loaded/unloaded planes for them. He flew all over the world and did 14 parachute jumps in his time with them. One of his most memorable missions was when he lived on an airfield near Kosovo for ten weeks in 1999 – moving refugees to the UK. He says it really struck him how lucky he was when he saw all those people boarding the Hercules with their entire life belongings in two plastic shopping bags.

Andy hopes to raise more than $2400 ($100/hour) for his 24 hour stint.

The room is Studio 56 – a student designed sustainable building, it’s situated in the staff carpark, and is about the size of a garden shed – it’s a bookable meeting room. There is no toilet … Andy has allowed himself short breaks for relief stops!

You can read more about Andy’s adventure here.

Donations can be made on the Relay for Life site – and there are also links from the Otago Polytechnic Website and Facebook page.

Add a comment